With growing incidences of disasters across the country and their impact of loss on human and material assets, it has become important that emphasis be placed on risk management and protection through insurance, analysts have said.
This is why professionalism is very important and why insurance professionals, particularly the insurance brokers whose responsibility includes offering risk management advice to consumers and the public on how to cope with threatening risks in their environment and economic activities, should be visible.
Pushing forward, the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB), a body made up of over 500 brokerage firms, says insurance involvement in disaster management will take the centre stage at its 2014 National Insurance Conference slated for this month Abuja.
The theme of the conference – “Disaster Management: Any Role for Insurance?” The Council says the conference is expected to draw participation from disaster and insurance management institutions in Nigeria and abroad to further discuss the role of insurance industry in disaster management within the country.
Sola Tinubu, chairman, planning committee of the conference, notes that the insurance industry with professional obligations of risk mitigation, has often been side-lined in disaster management in Nigeria, a situation that is at variance with practices in other parts of the globe.
“The conference could not have been more timely than now considering the chain of combustible events happening all over the world leading to unprecedented losses of human and material assets,” says Tinubu, saying the Nigerian government would have seen the need to involve insurance practitioners in formulating policies and establishment of institutions to manage disasters and mitigate losses caused to victims.
The conference, which would also feature the sub-theme: “Insurance Regulation: The Global Perspective” would provide a robust platform for discussing current trends with regards to insurance regulation in Nigeria.
Also, the conference will provide a platform for the NCRIB team led by the council’s president, Ayodapo Shoderu to generate robust discourse on issue that has continued to affect the operation of insurance professionals in Nigeria.
Tinubu says that the intention of the choice theme is to allow for ventilation of views and opinions by eminent resourceful professionals and stakeholders drawn from all sectors of the nation’s economy and, particularly disaster management institutions.
Dignitaries expected at the conference include David Mark, Senate president; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, minister of finance; Nathan Adu, president, Ghana Insurance Brokers’ Association (GIBA); Onyebuchi Chukwu, minister of health; Ade Abolurin, commandant general, Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC); Fola Daniel, commissioner for insurance, director-general, National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA); Muhammad Sani Sidi, president, Institute of Chartered Accountant of Nigeria (ICAN); Chidi Ajaegbu; royal father of the day is Alayeluwa Oba Omosanya Akinyemi, Ebi Idena of Idena Remo.
NCRIB is the body coordinating the affairs of insurance brokers in Nigeria as enshrined in the NCRIB Act. No 21 of 2003.
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